


til our ribs get tough

by andchaos



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Post-5x13, Post-Canon, nonlinear timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:53:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lasts a year, doing things and not doing things and having conversations with the lines between what Brian says to him.</p><p>Or, the one where they still love each other from 400 miles away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	til our ribs get tough

**Author's Note:**

> okay, this is basically just 5 out-of-order parts of them being garbage, but not as garbage as me. also, bonus; [the lorde song the title is from](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qaeoz_7cyE) references a super important britin song sO !!

 III.

 

          Justin doesn’t do a lot of things.

          He doesn’t eat Chinese food by himself. He doesn’t spend more than five dollars on a coffee. He doesn’t leave leftovers in the fridge for more than three days. He doesn’t listen to violin music. He doesn’t sleep with socks on. He doesn’t talk to his father.

          He doesn’t think about Brian when he doesn’t have the time.

          Sometimes he does have the time, though. Sometimes he goes to bed whole hours before he feels tired, and lays there replaying his own memories in the dark, tracing their outlines on his cracked-plaster ceiling. Usually he doesn’t call Brian.

          But sometimes he does.

          “It’s three in the morning,” Brian groans into the phone when he picks up.

          Justin pauses a beat.

          _I miss you_ , he thinks.

          “Tell me what you did today,” he says.

 

 

 

V.

          Justin misses the sound of Brian’s heartbeat. He realizes this one night, when he has it beside his ear, the first night he’s been able to breathe in a long, long time.

          Brian brushes his hand through Justin’s hair, soft and soothing and slow, and Justin breathes out a long sigh and presses more of his cheek against the warmth of Brian’s bare chest.

          “You’re thinking,” Brian says. For some reason, it sounds like an accusation. Then, softer: “What are you thinking about?”

          Justin doesn’t say anything for a long moment, instead curving as close to Brian as he possibly can. Then at length he says, “You.”

          Brian’s fingers comb through his hair again, curling deep. “And what about me, pray tell?”

          Justin closes his eyes. He drags his hand down Brian’s side, not thinking much about it, feeling the ridges of his ribs and the smooth warmth of his skin. He stops at his waist, and rubs his thumb against the bone there. He’s always loved the V of Brian’s hips. Above him, he can hear Brian sigh. He sounds content. Justin clings onto that like a lifeline.

          “Do you regret it?” he asks then. His head won’t stop spinning, and those terrible thoughts won’t stop coming, the ones that haven’t plagued him in over a year. He says urgently, “I don’t want you to have done this for me. We already…you know why that won’t work.”

          “Justin, when have I _ever_ done anything just for you?” Justin snorts, and Brian tugs on his hair a little, enough to sting. “Fuck you. You know what I mean.”

          Justin laughs, and he doesn’t want to admit it, but he already feels better. Brian’s always had a strange, particular couple of superpowers. Flipping Justin’s mood around is naturally one of them.

          “Yeah, I do know you—and doing things for me is your favorite hobby,” he teases. “What? What happened to, ‘oh Justin, my love, my light, my prince, I would give anything for you—’”

          “You’ve been living alone too long,” Brian sneers. “You’ve obviously gone completely insane.”

          “Or you’ve been gone too long,” Justin snickers. “Clearly you’ve forgotten just how powerful and cute I can be.”

          “Trust me, that’s unforgettable. I should know. I’ve tried.”

          Justin lifts his head, mocking a glare at him, but Brian’s smiling the most cheesy and horrible smile that he just ends up laughing, collapsing back onto Brian’s chest to huff his amusement into his skin. Brian laughs too, ruffling Justin’s hair. As he calms down, Justin starts pressing little kisses wherever he sees, until he crawls up to press his lips, gently, to Brian’s. Brian’s fingers curl back into his hair and keep him tethered there for a moment, and they kiss, slow and reverent in the dark. Brian’s tongue curls into his mouth, and Justin sighs, clutching desperate fingers at his neck, at his jaw, and his cheeks.

          “You’re not just doing this for me?” Justin breathes in the space between their mouths, when their foreheads are laying against one another.

          “Of course I’m doing it for you,” Brian says. “But I’m doing it for me, too. Being with you is what makes me happy.”

          For just a moment, Justin holds his breath, and he’s pretty sure he can hear his heart singing. He kisses Brian once, twice. Brian wraps his arm around Justin’s shoulders and keeps him close there against him, until he starts going lightheaded with how long they kiss. He doesn’t mind.

          “I’ve missed you,” Justin says, and even though he’s panting a little from lack of oxygen, he’s smiling when they part for breath.

          Brian’s grin flashes white in the dark of the room, and then he pulls Justin back in, his tongue hot and demanding and very well practiced at making Justin’s entire body flood with warmth, the good encompassing kind.

          “I missed you too, Sunshine.”

 

 

 

II.

 

          Justin does a lot of things.

          He buys new CDs every couple of weeks. He traces his lips with his fingers after a really good kiss. He re-wears clothes for days to put off doing laundry. He cries at the end of sad movies. He calls each of his friends from Pittsburgh at least twice a week. He believes in fairytale endings.

          He wonders what Brian’s doing all the time. Even if he’s not wondering consciously, the question is floating somewhere in the back of his head.

          Brian’s never been one for failing to talk about himself, so it’s not like Justin has no idea what he’s _doing_ —it’s that he doesn’t know how he’s feeling, what he’s thinking. Brian always spoke louder with his body than he ever did with his mouth (that, he’d rather dedicate to other talents). He doesn’t exactly lie, but he leaves out all of the important details, the things that indicate the whys. He leaves out the pleas for help, for Justin to stop him before his pride and this ridiculous image of himself as stone-cold send him spinning too far out of control. There are too many gaps in the things he says for Justin to treat them with any kind of isolated respect.

          Instead, he likes to fill those spaces in with the things he imagines Brian wants to say but doesn’t really know how to. He knows it’s half wish fulfillment, but he doesn’t particularly care. Half of everything they have is unspoken. That’s the best part, Justin sometimes thinks; the fact that him and Brian are something he _feels_ , not something he’s told.

          “Tell me about your day,” Justin demands into his phone one morning. He stirs his coffee with one hand and holds his cell phone with his other. When he sips his drink, it’s still too hot to have. His eyes wander around the café.

          “Hmm, well. It just started,” Brian says.

          Justin imagines Brian’s stretched out in bed, probably naked, with the sheets pooled around his hips. He spends a few seconds just imagining Brian’s hips. Then the Brian in his head says, _I wish you had woken up with me._

          Justin clears his throat. “Are you at the office already?”

          “Not yet,” says Brian. “I don’t have to be in until twelve. Something stupid with the computer systems, I can’t go in until the IT guys fix it and get us up and running again.”

          “Oh, poor you, having to sleep in. What are you going to do with your next two hours?”

          “Lay in bed.” He makes this noise he sometimes does when he’s stretching out in the mornings and his joints are all groaning and cracking pleasantly, right before Justin calls him an old man.

          Today, Justin pours more sugar into his coffee. In his head, Brian says, _You could lay in bed with me, if I was there._

          “Well, I’m busy this morning,” Justin tells him. “Got a shift in half an hour, and then I have to meet with the head of this gallery I’m supposed to be displaying at towards the end of the week.”

          “Aren’t you becoming quite the respected artist. What’s next? Showings in Athens? Auctions in Paris?”

          Justin laughs. “Nothing like that. It’s good though, really good. The owner there, she swears I could sell to some pretty important people if I make the right connections at this viewing.”

          “Hmph. Don’t go getting too famous on me, now. Next thing I know you’ll be begging me to buy us tickets to go to the Louvre or somewhere to improve your cultural understanding. Or something else equally inane.”

          _I’ll take you there_ , he thinks Brian promises. _Your next birthday? Sometime in the summer?_

          Justin grins. “That can be our next anniversary.”

          He sips at his coffee now, finally cool enough to drink. Over the line, Brian snorts.

          “Your wish is my command,” he says scathingly. He means it. “So, tell me about this gallery showing. What are you presenting? Have I seen it?”

          “It’s the one I sent to you two weeks ago. I smudged the outline like you said. You were right, it’s much better like this.”

          “Of course it is,” Brian says smugly. “You may have all the talent, but I’m still the best critic in town.”

          “No, you’re better than the critics in town. That’s why I have to outsource like this.”

          Brian makes a low noise of amusement. Justin smiles to himself.

          “Well, I’m sure you’ll meet all the right people and end up with your work on a billboard or a wildly successful television campaign. Who knows, someone could bring something of yours to my very office.”

          “Wow, successful enough to hit your desk. Impressive,” Justin says.

          “You should know, you’ve hit my desk plenty of times.” _I think about it all the time._ Justin bites his lip. _I think about you all the time._ “Is it not the place where miracles happen?”

          “Oh, I definitely learned a lot. I was a lowly intern back then,” Justin says, with mock ruefulness. “I needed the discipline.”

          “That’s my middle name,” says Brian.

          “Did you change it from Grossly Romantic? Interesting.”

          “Please,” Brian scoffs. _Please, you make me this way._ “Listen, I have to shower and run a few errands before I go into the office, so I have to go.”

          He lingers, though. _I don’t want to go. When will I hear from you again?_

          “Okay,” Justin says easily. “I have a bunch of stuff to do today, but I might call you later. Probably when I’m on my way to pick up dinner or something.”

          “Whatever. Love you.” _Love you_.

          “Love you too,” Justin promises.

 

 

 

IV.

          The subway rumbles to a stop, and Justin rouses himself slightly from where he was half-dozing against his window. He hates falling asleep on the subway, and makes every effort not to do it, but he had a very long day.

          The walk to his apartment seems significantly farther than usual, even though he only lives a few blocks away from the station. He trudges the entire way home, and feels like he ran several marathons just to find his way there when he finally gets inside. He flips the light on as he goes through, which flickers dimly. He kicks off his shoes and jeans and is three seconds away from falling face-first onto his bed and not moving until morning when his phone goes off.

          He digs it out of the pocket of his discarded jeans and falls face-first onto his bed anyway.

          “What?”

          “Well, well, Sunshine’s not feeling very sunshiney.”

          Brian’s voice, clear but pitched oddly over the line, sounds bright and warm despite the lateness of the hour.

          Justin checks the time; it’s only half past ten. Oh well, whatever. He’s tired.

          “Excuse me for lack of enthusiasm,” he says, rolling his eyes and hoping Brian can somehow hear the gesture in his tone. “I was _this_ close to going to bed.”

          “And now you’re this close to talking to me for the next hour at least. What are you wearing?”

          Justin actually pauses a second before snorting loudly into the phone.

          “What am I _wearing_?” he scoffs. “Very smooth, Mr Kinney. Possibly the most suave thing ever said to me. I think my pants just flew across the room.”

          Still, teasing Brian doesn’t stop Justin from rolling onto his back and getting more comfortable against his pillows. He trails one of his hands absently down his chest, brushes it along his waistline.

          “I’m glad you’re getting naked,” Brian says. “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

          “Oh, the usual,” Justin says flippantly. He pushes his shirt up with his free hand and rubs his fingers teasingly over a nipple. “You, naked. Preferably here with me. Definitely sucking me off.”

          Brian hums thoughtfully. “That’s all? Just sucking you off? Christ, I’m practically straight in your vanilla little fantasy.”

          “No, you’re doing other things,” Justin confirms. His fingers creep beneath the waistline on his boxers. God, Brian can get him going in zero seconds flat. He might consider it pathetic if he wasn’t so busy enjoying it.

          “ _Like_?”

          Justin grins a little into his shoulder. He works his entire hand under his waistband and palms himself, lightly.

          “Like fingering me,” he says. “God, I miss you fingering me.”

          “Of course I’m playing with your sweet little ass in this,” Brian says. He probably means it to sound condescending, but Justin can tell he’s into it. He’s probably getting himself off thinking about it too. Justin rubs himself a little more firmly, and rolls his hips up into his hand. His head lolls back on the pillow, and he closes his eyes.

          “Yeah, so,” Justin says, a little more breathlessly than he means. He momentarily loses his train of thought. “Uhm. I forget what I was saying.”

          “That good, huh?” Brian sounds delicately amused; Justin likes to think he can hear the affection underlying his tone. “Well, you did always like that too much.”

          “Not as much as you like it,” Justin says. “If you could spend all day just playing with my ass, you would. Fuck. Fingering me. Rimming me. Fucking me…”

          “God, won’t you get tired? I might finally turn you out if you let me stay in bed with you all day after this long apart.”

          “Oh yeah?” He snickers, but it turns into a long, guttural groan. He draws it out, letting Brian hear it. “What would you do?”

          Brian’s panting a little, he can tell. He can practically see Brian’s flushed face, color probably high in his cheeks, his hair losing some of its affected fluff and sticking haphazardly to his forehead. Justin breathes out shakily. He kind of really wants to finger himself, but he can’t jerk off and hold the phone and do that all at the same time, so he grunts and lets it go.

          “Edge you,” Brian says, and Justin forgets to breathe for a second. “All day. I would start off just jerking you off or something to get you up there, but after that…god. Blow you. Maybe tie you up. Eat you out for _at least_ an hour.”

          “You’re gonna keep me interested for an hour?” Justin says loftily, but he’s imagining it already, and he can’t stop himself from moving his hand a little faster. He can already feel his toes curling; he would probably never last the whole day Brian’s mapping out. He would most likely die first. Most definitely.

          “I could keep you interested for longer than that,” Brian scoffs. “I could fuck you into next week and you’d still come crawling back for more on hands and knees.”

          Justin lets the jokes that filter through his mind go, though he considers them all. He shifts around on his bed, trying not to come so fast. He wants to listen to Brian talk a little while longer.

          “Tell me about it,” he says.

          “Hmm…I would roll you onto your stomach first,” Brian says.

          He’s talking slow, and pitched low, so in the dark of his bedroom Justin feels like he’s whispering directly into his ear. For a moment, the ache he feels for Pittsburgh swells and throbs painfully.

          Brian’s still talking, “Press slow kisses all down your back, tease you. Make you beg for it before I even think about spreading you open and getting my tongue on you. Then get you screaming my name before I get anywhere close to doing anything else besides fucking you with my tongue, eating you out so well that the only thing you think about for at least a week after is how to get me to do it again. And if you’re good, I might let you sit on my face.”

          Justin’s moaning, forgetting to breathe or speak or do anything but fuck his hips up into his hand and listen to Brian talk.

          “You close?” Brian asks.

          Justin can’t do much more than stutter out an ineloquent, _“Uh-huh”_ and Brian chuckles, but he sounds breathless too when he says, “Me too.”

          “Get me there,” Justin says.

          Brian is quiet for a moment. Justin doesn’t really know what he’s expecting; a couple of seconds later, he hears the telltale signs that Brian’s coming, his moans and breathy curses coming through the line, and the thought of how he looks, what he’s doing, the way he sounds is enough to push Justin over the edge. He gasps as he comes, rocking his hips up arhythmically and thinking of Brian listening to him on the other end of the phone still pressed to his cheek.

          They’re quiet when they come down, and Justin thinks that he would rather fall asleep to the sound of Brian’s breathing than hang up the phone. Alas, at length Brian says, “I should go,” and Justin gives a heavy sigh.

          “I miss you,” he says.

          His heart beats. Shadows flicker across the ceiling. Brian clicks his tongue.

          He says, “I love you.”

 

 

 

I.

          Justin hates New York the second he gets there. He loves the sights and he loves the people and he loves making art, but at the end of every day he curls up into his too-thin sheets on his too-small bed and he wonders, he wonders.

          Brian told him not to think about it. He said not to miss him, not to let his sorrow and his misery and the piece of him that Brian carved out and put on his mantle affect his mood, his decisions, his life. And Justin doesn’t. He doesn’t think about Brian so that the hurt is quiet, or he does think about Brian and he does something to make the pain ebb and soften anyway.

          He lasts a year, doing things and not doing things and having conversations with the lines between what Brian says to him. He spends a lot of nights watching his ceiling, too. He knows it almost as well as he knows the ceiling in the loft, although he doesn’t harbor nearly as many good memories stained into these thin, threadbare sheets. Brian offered to buy him nice, new, silk sheets before he left, but Justin declined. Brian has already made claw marks inches deep in his head, in his skin. Justin can’t have him in his apartment, too. He’d never last.

          One night, just past his fourteen month mark, he rolls over in the blanket burrito he’s crafted for himself and blinks at the ceiling, eyes tracing all the usual memories into the well-worn plaster. Then he sighs and digs his phone out of his backpack.

          He has a few texts from Daphne that he forgot to answer while he was out at dinner that night, a missed call from Debbie that he’ll have to return in the morning. He ignores them all and presses the first button on his speed dial.

          “I can’t do this,” Justin says when the ringing stops.

          He can hear Brian sigh. Despite how often he chastises Justin for calling him past midnight when he needs his beauty rest, Justin’s never once called and not had Brian pick up.

          “Yes you can,” Brian says tiredly. “I don’t suppose this freakout could wait until the morning? I was just getting ready for bed.”

          “You’re always just getting ready for bed!” Justin cries out suddenly. He flings one arm out as he yells, unraveling his blanket nest and slamming his hand painfully into the wall.

          “Did you hit your hand on the wall again?” Brian asks, sounding bored.

          “Shut up,” Justin grumbles. And then, “Brian, did you hear me? I said I can’t do this.”

          “Yes, I heard you. I’ve heard you for the past year and however many months. Brian, I hate everyone here. Brian, the curator for the gallery I’m showing at tomorrow is a cocksucking son of a bitch. Brian, I’ve never stopped loving you and to this day you have full reign of my heart.”

          “Hey,” Justin says, laughter bubbling up through his words despite his determined frustration. “I’ve never said that last one.”

          “Well, you probably would say it,” says Brian. “Listen, Justin—”

          “No!” he interrupts, loudly. Too loudly; his neighbor will probably complain in the morning. “I’ve had it with _you have to find yourself, Justin_ s and _you have to do this on your own_ s and _we’ll see each other again_ s!”

          “You’re the one saying all those things!” Brian says, sounding incensed for the first time. “I only said—”

          “That you want me happy, I know.” He sighs and smacks his palm down on his forehead, only to start rubbing at the spot.

          “Can I finish a thought without you interrupting me, please?” Brian says testily. “And I _do_ want you happy. You said this is what would make you happy!”

          “Well, it’s not enough anymore!” Justin says. “I need to do something. I need to see you.”

          “You just saw me,” Brian reminds him. “I was up there two weeks ago. God, I know we drank a lot of wine, but you _do_ remember that weekend, don’t you?”

          “ _Yes_. But I can’t—I can’t keep seeing you for a stolen weekend or—or maybe three whole days, if we can snatch a moment of good luck!”

          For the first time, Brian sounds guarded. He asks slowly, “What are you saying?”

          Justin scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm. “We need to figure something else out. Fuck art. I’ll move back there with you. If I’m as good as you say, it won’t matter where—”

          “No,” Brian says firmly.

          “No, I’m not as good as you say?”

          “No, you’re not moving back here,” Brian sighs. Justin rubs at his eyes again, feeling exhaustion in every inch of his body. He yawns. Brian says, “What if I was thinking about moving up there?”

          Every cell in Justin’s body freezes. If he could see down to the very last atom, he’s pretty sure it would be as paralyzed as his unbeating heart. Then the moment breaks, and his pulse kicks up to twice as fast as before. For a second he thinks his heart is beating so loudly that he can’t hear anything on Brian’s end anymore, and then he realizes that that’s because Brian has gone silent, holding his breath.

          Justin swallows. Twice. He’s quiet when he asks, “You…You want to move up here with me?”

          “I…may have taken some steps,” Brian says slowly, carefully. “Done some rearranging with company assets and investments, and I…could move to New York. If you wanted. Remember that position I was turned down for a few years ago? Well a similar one opened up at their rival company, and they know their rivals were thinking of recruiting me. They’ve offered me more than I’m even making right now, and since I’ve been so successful here they think I can do even better in the city—”

          Justin is barely listening anymore. Despite just being scolded for it, he interrupts Brian again to ask flatly, “You want to move up here with me.”

          It's less of a question this time.

          Brian is silent for awhile. Then he says, “We would need to find a bigger place. I can’t live in that shoebox with you.”

          “Anywhere,” Justin breathes. Then he clears his throat. “I want a studio,” he demands.

          He can tell Brian’s smiling. “Of your very own?”

          “Yes,” says Justin. “A whole room just for my art. And a bed, a big one. Bigger than the loft’s.”

          “I’ll need windows,” says Brian. “Huge glass windows that overlook the city.”

          “You always did like to fuck me with a view,” Justin says, and he earns Brian’s quiet, beautiful laughter for it. He sighs. “Brian?”

          Brian doesn’t say anything at first. Then he says, “It won’t be long, you know. A month. Two.”

          Justin closes his eyes. He wasn’t tired when he laid down, not really, but now he can feel his body relaxing. He clutches the phone more tightly to his ear.

          “Two months isn’t so long,” Brian reasons.

          Justin huffs a laugh. He says, “I’ve waited longer than that for your obstinate stuck-up ass.”

          Brian breathes out; Justin thinks he hears him chuckling quietly too, beneath the exhaled breath.

          “So what will you do til then?” Brian asks, teasing. “Pine for me?”

          Justin smiles, senseless and private in the dark.

          “A lot of things,” he promises.

**Author's Note:**

> [come hmu](http://bluenoahh.tumblr.com/post/138351579280) ;)


End file.
